6 Ridiculous History Myths (You Probably Think Are True)

Everybody knows that people in the past were insane. They wore funny hats, used words like "wherefore," and don't get us started on the pants.

But some of the historic anecdotes we love repeating again and again simply aren't true. As convenient as it may be to think of our ancestors as murder-happy torture enthusiasts, they were crazy, but they weren't that crazy.

#6. Gun Fights in the Violent Wild West

The Insanity:

A gloriously mustached man sits at a card game in an old saloon, surrounded by cowboys and surprisingly fresh-faced prostitutes. He looks up, and notices that the player opposite him is hiding an extra card up his sleeve. He calls him on it, the word yellow is pronounced as 'yeller,' and pretty soon they're facing off in the city square. There's a long moment before the cheater moves for his hip holster, but he's not fast enough. Quick as lightning, the gambler draws his revolver and shoots the cheat dead between the eyes.

The cowboys and prostitutes go back to their drinks, well-accustomed to this sort of random violence, as the man nonchalantly twirls his pistol and says: "Guess he couldn't read my poker face."

A typical western saloon, moments before everyone in the room shot each other.

A hundred years of Westerns have taught us that this is how you lived and died in the Wild West. The quicker draw lived to gun-fight another day. It was essentially a roving single elimination rock, paper, scissors tournament that didn't end until you were dead.

But in Reality...

How many murders do you suppose these old western towns saw a year? Let's say the bloodiest, gun-slingingest of the famous cattle towns with the cowboys doing quick-draws at high noon every other day. A hundred? More?

How about five? That was the most murders any old-west town saw in any one year. Ever. Most towns averaged about 1.5 murders a year, and not all of those were shooting. You were way more likely to be murdered in Baltimore in 2008 than you were in Tombstone in 1881, the year of the famous gunfight at the OK Corral (body count: three) and the town's most violent year ever.

As for the traditional Western gunfight as depicted in movies, the inaccuracy of handguns at the time would have made quick-drawing skill irrelevant: It was simply so unlikely you'd hit a guy on the first, second or third shot that it didn't really matter which guy got out his gun first. The closest history got to high-noon show downs was dueling, where people just stood across from one another with their guns out, aimed and fired until someone got lucky, and someone else was dead. Forget about "fanning," rapidly cocking a single-action revolver between rounds like Clint Eastwood does in A Fistful of Dollars. You'd be lucky to hit a henchman if the duel took place in a closet.

Why Do We Believe It?

Because famous gunfighters like Billy the Kid wanted you to believe it. If you've seen Young Guns on cable, you probably know the guy was gunning somebody down every ten minutes!

"... then I was all like 'pow' 'pow' and all the minotaurs exploded!"

Well according to sources who aren't Billy The Kid, his lifetime kill count was four. Criminals inflated their murder stats for the same reason guys today inflate their sexual experience: It made them look cool. Towns like Deadwood talked up their violent, lawless natures in order to attract adventurous settlers. Books were written about them and movies were made as soon as cameras were invented, and nobody who'd been out west was rushing to correct the misconceptions because, why the hell would they. A century and a half later, we still love that lie.

We believe it because shooting a nameless bad guy in the heart is infinitely more satisfying than filing a complaint with the cops or writing a strongly worded letter to the editor. No checks and balances, no second guessing. Just you and a gun.

Pardon us, we have a certain Bon Jovi song we need to play right now.

#5. Stock Brokers Jumping Out of Windows When The Market Crashes

The Insanity:

After the Wall Street crash in 1929 that eventually led to the Great Depression, ruined investors jumped en masse from the windows of their towering buildings. They plunged to the ground in a fatal metaphor for the value of their stocks, leaving the streets below covered with splattered puddles of failed capitalism.

Knowledge of this historical event is so widespread that references to it can be found everywhere, from RoboCop to modern protests against the Wall Street bailout:

But in Reality...

Unfortunately for the angry guy in that picture--and fortunately for the people whose job it is to clean up the sidewalks in New York--the legendary string of dramatic Wall Street suicides never actually happened.

The sweet relief of used condoms and vomit.

A popular comedian at the time made a quip about speculators needing to "stand in line to get a window to jump out of." The myth grew from there, until the "suddenly bankrupt stockbroker leaping from a window" became a stereotype.

Failed early attempts at jetpack commuting didn't help.

In reality, only two suicides by jumping occurred on Wall Street between the crash and the end of 1929, and one of those was that of an elderly female clerk named Hulda Borowski--not really the image that comes to mind when you hear "corporate fat-cat."

Why Do We Believe It?

First of all, we love a good dramatic symbol. An oil tanker spills a million gallons of oil on a beach? Ah, that's just a number. But show us a picture of an otter coated in oil? Holy shit! It's a disaster.

Likewise, saying the market lost 12 percent doesn't quite stick to the mind as well as the idea of stock brokers splattering their brains on the sidewalk rather than face another day of losses.

Also, take another look at the dude's sign up there. We root for this sort of thing to happen to the Gordon Gekko types who play Blackjack with billions in other people's money. They're the ones to blame. So when we lose our jobs or retirement accounts due to a crash, it makes us feel a little better to know the guys with gold watches and slicked-back hair got a face full of concrete.

The story goes that at protests in the late sixties, feminists raging against the male-dominated world defiantly removed and set fire to their bras. It was a powerful statement, symbolically declaring the women's desire for their feminine power to burst out of its patriarchal restraints and bounce free, no longer confined by the lace and spandex of traditional social mores.

We at Cracked support sweet bouncy freedom.

But in Reality...

This one literally never happened as far as anyone can tell. Women protesting against the 1968 Miss America contest in New York did toss several items into a trash can, including bras, girdles, high heeled shoes and women's magazines, labeling them "instruments of torture." But no fire was involved, except for the fire of burning feminine rage. Neither did the women actually remove their bras at the protest, inexplicably opting to gather the bras beforehand, and remain fully clothed.

It wasn't long after the era of Vietnam protesters burning their draft cards, and a journalist or two presumably conflated one of the concepts with the other. After all, they're all hippies, right?

Why Do We Believe It?

There's the fact that it involves topless women. Even the Wall Street Journal knows you get more readers if you can tie the story to unrestrained titties. Also, most of us want to believe people with non-mainstream opinions are all on the far-out fringe, doing crazy things they'll be embarrassed by later in life.

It saves us the trouble of listening to them. A woman demanding equal pay for equal work is making a point you have to address. A woman burning a bra and claiming it's a torture device is just a silly sideshow you can safely dismiss after a few minutes of vigorous masturbation.